UK Trip Day 11 Saffron Walden to York

UK Trip Day 11

We headed north today on our way to Yorkshire where we'll be staying at Escrick, just outside the city of York, for three nights before meeting up with Susan and Geoffrey even further north for a week in a cottage at Danby on the North Yorkshire moors.

The weather was once again glorious. We'd barely got under way before Barb the Navigator noticed on the map Oxburgh Hall just north of Thetford.  The blurb in the National Trust book looked promising and anyway we would need morning tea by the time we got there, so we turned off the road to have a peek.

Oxburgh Hall with Barb

Oxburgh Hall on it's own

It's completely surrounded by a moat

 

Tea!

Oh yes!  It was well worth not just a peek but a full blown exploration. The house had two magnificent tower turrets, a moat (complete with resident swan family) wonderful tapestries and an interesting history. How could we resist?  Barb was in seventh heaven and even John, who is less moved by stately homes than Barb, could not help but be charmed by the place (actually my comment as it came into view on the walk from the car park was WOW!).  There was even a priest hole!  We were able to climb the very long spiral staircase to the roof and the views from there were quite splendid. There's quite a bit of restoration work going on here at the moment and it's a property well worth saving.  We were really glad we went.

Swan's - beautiful but evil tempered

 This was one stately home you could live in

There were a lot of tapestries

 

An unusually wide spiral stair case

View from the top

 

We sped off again towards King's Lynn. John wanted to go to the quayside here for a brief look, having popped in many years ago when working as an engineer on coasters. In truth it was a little underwhelming and the streets were alarmingly narrow and busy.  This is code for Barb not liking the heavy traffic, narrow streets and the quay side.  Its not the same as castles and stately homes!  King's Lynn did have a rather nice church and some interesting old architecture, but we drove on in the direction of Sleaford.

A Church - Kings Lynn

Just before we reached Sleaford Barb directed John off the main road again to the tiny village of Heckington. It had the only operational eight sailed windmill in the country and an award winning café - thus we stopped at Sylv's Cafe for lunch.  It was scrupulously clean with a good honest English menu and Carol (waitress) and Sylvie were so friendly and welcoming.  We put in a vote for them for this year's best café competition too.  We hope they win.  The windmill was very picturesque and there was a specialist brewery at its base. We didn't stop to sample any of their ale, having still a long drive ahead.  Grrr.

The church at Heckington

Sylv and Carol at the café

 

Now that's a level crossing gate!

Our intention when we set off this morning was to see Lincoln cathedral as we passed through Lincoln. Technically we did indeed do this. We followed the signage to the cathedral parking area and we could clearly see the cathedral on the hill ahead of us, but somehow we must've taken a wrong turn and missed it entirely. By the time we realised, we were heading out of town on the A15 amidst busy traffic.  Oh well ...

There's Lincoln Cathedral - it was actually too dominating to miss

Never mind, we'll get a chance to see the Humber bridge as we pass over it on our way to York via Beverley.  We certainly did see it. We did also go over it. What we couldn't do was stop and admire it. Hmmm.

By now we were both getting very weary and just wanted to find Escrick and our accommodation at The Black Bull Inn.  We finally arrived at about 6pm. The inn is very quaint with lots of "period features" like a disturbingly creaky floor and a window set at floor level.  Our room is up a steep narrow staircase then down a winding corridor going up and down several sets of stairs as we go.  We quickly realised that we won't be able to lug our suitcases up there (for we read John, the inevitable lugger), so instead we decanted what we needed into smaller bags.
 

The Black Bull at Escrick

The main street in Escrick

The tennis club, Escrick

 After eating so well at Sylv's neither of us felt much like eating a proper meal and we just had a cheese and biscuit platter in the bar, with beer, and then took a short walk around this very pretty village before retiring for the night. We were both stuffed after the long drive.